On Baseball; Tales of '81: A Yankee Choke, A Boss Brawl

By MURRAY CHASS

Published: June 17, 2004

THE Yankees return to the scene of the crime tomorrow night. The question is what the crime was when the Yankees lost three consecutive games to the Dodgers in Los Angeles during the 1981 World Series, then lost the Series itself when it returned to the Bronx.

Was the crime the loss of the Series after the Yankees won the first two games? Was it the owner's public apology to the people of New York for his team's performance? Or was it the alleged fight George Steinbrenner had with two young men in an elevator at a Los Angeles hotel?

The Yankees' trip to Los Angeles for a three-game interleague series this weekend is their first visit there since those devastating three games in 1981. That visit was memorable for the Steinbrenner fight, but the most unforgettable game moment in the series actually came back in the Bronx, when Yankees Manager Bob Lemon pinch-hit for Tommy John with two on and two out in the fourth inning of a 1-1 game in Game 6.

John had shut out the Dodgers for seven innings in Game 2 and was doing fine in Game 6. Nevertheless, Bobby Murcer batted for John and flied out. The Dodgers proceeded to break the game open, and clinch the series, by scoring seven runs in the next two innings against Yankees relievers.

Why did Lemon bat for John? All indications point to Steinbrenner as the reason. In the days and months after the game, players said they heard that Steinbrenner had called the dugout and told Lemon that the Yankees had to score runs that night and that the manager shouldn't miss any chances to score.

But calling the dugout and telling the manager what to do was not unusual for Steinbrenner. The alleged fight was another matter. Joe Louis? Rocky Marciano? Sugar Ray Robinson? They apparently had nothing on Steinbrenner.

After the Yankees had lost their third straight game in Los Angeles, they stayed there overnight, their flight home scheduled to depart the next morning. Steinbrenner was to have dinner with his wife and associates that evening and, as he rode an elevator to the lobby, he said, he encountered two young men who recognized him.

They were drunk and profanely abusive, Steinbrenner related at the time, adding that they talked about the ''chokers'' who played for the Yankees and the ''animals'' who lived in New York. Steinbrenner most likely thought his players had choked, and he had not always spoken in glowing terms about every aspect of New York, but they were his players and his city. These brash young men, one of whom wore a Dodgers cap, had no business bad-mouthing his players and his people.

Steinbrenner said he responded with an obscenity, whereupon one of the men hit him on the side of the head with a beer bottle he was holding. Steinbrenner, 51 years old at the time, said that in rapid succession he threw three punches -- two rights and a left. Down went the first miscreant; down went the second.

Muhammad Ali? He might have stung like a bee, but Steinbrenner said he swung a sledgehammer.

''I clocked them,'' Steinbrenner told reporters just before midnight in a news conference he called in his hotel suite. ''There are two guys in this town looking for their teeth and two guys who will probably sue me.''

His attackers never did sue Steinbrenner. ''He never heard anything more about it,'' Howard Rubenstein, his publicist, said after speaking with Steinbrenner earlier this week. ''It just ended.''

Steinbrenner's opponents were never identified. They never came forward to verify the fight or Steinbrenner's account of it. Somewhere today, if the fight really occurred, there are two men, perhaps in their mid-40's, who have a unique story to tell. Their acknowledgement of the fight would settle one of the crazier aspects of Steinbrenner's ownership of the Yankees.

Despite a variety of injuries -- a cast-covered left hand, scraped knuckles on his right hand, a bump on his head, a bloody lip -- Steinbrenner failed to convince everyone that he really had engaged in a fight. One theory was he hit a wall to simulate a fight and spur his players for Game 6. The players weren't sure what to think. ''I think most of us just kind of laughed that somebody would try to accost George in the elevator,'' one of the players recalled yesterday, asking that his name not be used lest he offend Steinbrenner.

Nearly a quarter of a century later, a member of the Yankees' traveling party at the time recalled that he had seen Steinbrenner's hands after the incident and that from his experience working with boxers, they looked like those of someone who had been in a fight, not someone who had punched an elevator wall. This person, too, said he didn't want his name used.

But think of it. All these years people have been skeptical of Steinbrenner's story, and it might have been fact, not fiction. On the other hand, Yankees history is probably better served if the two combatants remain unknown and if the fight remains unverified.

Bizarre as it might have been, the story of the fight remains part of the lore of the Steinbrenner years. What other owner could have engaged in such an episode? Peter O'Malley? Carl Pohlad? Bud Selig? Marge Schott?

No, this is one of those things that makes Steinbrenner special. He won't be around forever, but this tale will be.

Photo: George Steinbrenner said he decked two Yankee-haters in a Los Angeles elevator in 1981. (Photo by United Press International)(pg. D3)